Getting Ready for a Divorce.
By Mrs. M. S. Butts
“KATE HARDY has gone to housekeeping.” “Housekeeping! I didn’t know that she was married.” “Oh, yes; she has been married six months and more.” “Why, she isn’t sixteen years old, is she? It seems only yesterday that she was a little girl in short dresses.” “She will be seventeen on her next birthday.” “What kind of a man has she married?” “Oh, a ‘man of words and not of deeds,’ as our school copybook used to say. One of those fellows that sit in corner groceries with their heels braced against the stove, smoking a cigar—more than twelve years older than Kate. By the time she’s grown up, they’ll be ready for a divorce.” This conclusion struck me forcibly. I had been hearing a great deal about divorce lately—sermons on divorce, newspaper articles, dismal croakings and prophecies, promulgations of remedies, etc. I was reminded of the old saying: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Here was Kate Hardy, but the other day going to school with the other children of the neighborhood, a bright, forward, rather willful girl, fretting a little, as she grew older, at the monotony of her life and the prosiness of her surroundings; longing for a journey, new books, a pretty room. Her home was hopelessly commonplace. Cooking, cleaning, sleeping, was the daily, monthly, and yearly routine. Once when Kate petted some geraniums and coaxed them into bloom, her mother found fault because they were in the way. “I want something to cheer me up a little,” said Kate pleasantly. “My work is enough to cheer me up,” said Mrs. Hardy. At that moment she was dressed in a faded calico, with her hair drawn back in a tight little knot; she was minus a collar, and her dark apron was soiled and greasy. She was not a slattern, but she believed in saving washing and dressing according to her work. Kate looked from her flowers to her mother, and something not entirely unlike disgust dawned in her face. Feeling such as was then awakened in the young girl rapidly develops into character. We do not realize how plastic is character in the young; indeed, it only exists in emotion. But in some sudden heat it takes form, and if a wrong form, can only be changed by great suffering. Here, then, was my little friend married, and to a man unworthy of her; a man who, by and by, would be sure to arouse her repulsion. She would grow into a strong woman and find herself mated to a weak man. There would be antagonism, bickering, wearisome efforts at adjustment, and in a moment of irrepressible and maybe righteous anger, a resolve to separate. This is how many divorces are prepared. We often hear it said that the stream cannot rise higher than the fountain. The fountain is the home. There is where our efforts should be directed, concentrated. There are certain crimes that justly rouse the horror of the community where they are committed; there are other crimes that are smiled upon or ignored. These latter are committed in respectable homes where children are brought into the world and then left to chance. Their bodies, indeed, are cared for after a fashion; but we have it on the highest authority that “the life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment.” Do not the parents need teaching upon this vital subject? The unwritten law of every-day life must be expounded, with all its wonderful and unlooked-for and unexplainable variations. To teach the parents is more important to-day than to teach the children. There is a need of studying first principles in a restated form. The law should be delivered anew, and with thunderings and lightnings. If, then, the question is asked, How shall divorces be prevented? we may safely answer, By doing all in our power to prevent marriages, so called, that naturally lead to divorce. And here a vast field of education is opened.—Mrs. M. S. Butts, in Phrenological Journal.